Sunday, April 07, 2013

Drumuru in LFR

Drumuru in the latest wing of LFR is an interesting boss. On LFR particularly, his mechanic seems very harsh.

First off, funny story in our LFR. We wiped on Drumuru something like six to eight times. On the kill attempt, we were down to 2% with only the tank and a couple dps alive. One of the dps, who we'll call Dave, had been a bit of jackass on earlier attempts. At the 2% mark, Dave wrote "This carry has been brought to you by Dave". Then he promptly died, to the jeers of the rest of the raid. Luckily the tank and the other dps finished off the boss.

The problem with Drumuru is one of his abilities. He covers the platform in some purple fog, but there is a path in the purple. You have to get on the path and follow it. This ability seems incredibly hard for people to deal with. On every attempt we lost more than half the raid.

We've seen mass death effects like this before in LFR. Think of the ice walls in Hargara. The thing about the ice walls, however, is that everyone died to it on the first attempt, but on the second attempt they were able to understand the mechanic and work towards mastery. An early LFR Hargara would go like: first attempt, 15 people died. Second attempt, maybe 8 people died. Third attempt, 4 people died and there was a kill.

On LFR Drumuru, there is no improvement, no indication that people are mastering the mechanic. They're just dying.

I think that the major reason this is so is due to the graphics chosen. The fog is a mixture of writhing purple lines and emptiness. I found it difficult to tell where the path was, even when I was on it. Not to mention that the room is already darker than normal.

I was able to survive this mechanic about half the time, but I felt it was a bit random whether I did or not. Even though I knew where to go, and what to look for. Heck, one time I ran to where I was sure the path was, and instead fell off the edge of the platform. At least I was right that there was no fog there.

If the fog had been more solid, more filled-in, I think people would grasp the mechanic sooner. Or perhaps if it was a color with a stronger contrast.

All in all, though the rest of the fight is good, this one mechanic is too punishing for LFR. It's an insta-kill that too many people are finding too hard to understand and master. In my opinion, this is entirely due to the choice of graphics used.

8 comments:

We downed it yesterday, after much suffering. Even in normal it's a freaking nightmare. Black on almost-black is not really a good idea. Add in the inevitable server-client sync problems and the labyrinth phase feels like playing russian roulette.Also, I'd like to understand why Blizzard reverted the excellent idea of putting lines on the floor to mark the areas. Blade Lord's tornadoes had them, and if the AoE effects on this boss also had them, it would make the whole thing a lot less sequence of wild guesses.

I was there last night, we killed it with 8 stacks of determination, and the only with about 10 people standing at the end, after CRs. The killer for me on the first few tries was the beam, since I wasn't sure which side to be on and got caught by the beam while equivocating, I still dont know, I just stay clear and tank CD my way through the fog til I can find a path...

I wonder if this is a graphics setting problem? To me the path and the fog are clearly different colours. The fog is very purple, not black like Helistar sees it; and the floor is a muddy-grey colour. Maybe turning down your graphics would help (or turning them up)!

On a similar topic, I find it very hard to stay out of sand-traps in the Horridon encounter, because I can't see their edges. I stand on a part of the floor that looks to be outside the trap, and I take damage from it and DBM warns me I'm in the sand trap.

@Dàchéng It looks that setting Effects > Particle Density to Low helps some people to clearer see the fog. Some members of my premade group reported better results that way. Maybe graphic card and drivers play a role in this too.

This aspect of phase 3 is poorly designed in my opinion and shouldn't have passed the testing at all. I agree the fight is otherwise okay.

We killed it in LFR on the second attempt which was really due to the guildie of mine who was leading.

He marked himself and made a macro saying something like: STACK ON ME!!! followed by whatever icon he had over his head. It was really successful to have everyone stacking on him. Whether they could see the maze or not didn't affect the outcome.

I play with graphics to minimum (and an insane frame rate....) because the effect is more visible.

BTW the 'stack on me' macro is an approach I tried: it fails just like it failed on Blade Lord's tornadoes due to the synchronization problems. When I tried to stack on the group in Drumuru it provided survival "almost" all the time. The other moments being when you see the entire group standing in black goo (and not taking damage) or you see yourself stacking on them in a safe area and you die.....

The fog isn't the one-shot, I believe it's folks who are standing on the wrong side of the beam when it solidifies and try to run across who are being one-shot. Oddly, you need to be on the SAME side of the beam that the fog starts on since it doesn't grow equally quickly in both directions... which makes no sense, but once I starting going to the "wrong" side, I started surviving. Regardless, that's a horrible mechanic for LFR.

That's because the path exists just in the area in front of the beam. As the beam sweeps forward, the path opens up in front of you. Basically, it is set up so that you're always in danger from the beam.

So you have to be near the beam when the phase starts to find the path.